"I have my belief and in all its simplicity it is the most powerful thing."
Release Year: 2008
Country: United Kingdom/Northern Ireland
Genre: Political drama
Director: Steve McQueen
Screenwriter: Enda Walsh, Steve McQueen
Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt
Music: David Holmes
Editing: Joe Walker
Actors: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Liam McMahon
Even with the closing narrative text detailing the aftermath of the strike, Hunger did not end with a sense of triumph or defeat on either side. It is not meant to generate sympathy for the cause of the hunger strikers, or condemn them for doing such an act, but to show just how far someone can go for something he truly believes in.
Country: United Kingdom/Northern Ireland
Genre: Political drama
Director: Steve McQueen
Screenwriter: Enda Walsh, Steve McQueen
Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt
Music: David Holmes
Editing: Joe Walker
Actors: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, Liam McMahon
A bit of context: in 1981, a hunger strike was conducted by the paramilitary prisoners from Irish Republican Army and became a crucial part in the propaganda war staged by IRA against the British government (in particular, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher). The aim is for the prisoners to be granted back their political status, which would enable them the rights not to wear prison uniforms and to have free association with other prisoners, among other things. The strike is the second attempt following the first one a year ago, which ended prematurely and unsuccessfully for the prisoners.
Steve McQueen's Hunger, a dramatization of the event, focused strictly on the chronological happenings inside the Maze prison. The key figures are Bobby Sands (Fassbender), leader of the strike, Father Dominic Moran (Cunningham), a priest coming to the prison to argue with Sands about the moral implications of the strike, Raymond Lohan (Graham), a prison officer under perpetual threat of murder by IRA assassins, and a handful other IRA prisoners doing various acts of political statements in the decrepit prison.
Wisely avoiding any political discourses about IRA, the British government, or even the national impact of the strike itself, the movie is interested in doing only one thing: to objectively examine an act triggered by overwhelming determination. Neither the act nor Sands are painted as heroic (consider the words from Thatcher herself, "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organization did not allow to many of its victims"), but they are also not portrayed as misguided or hypocritical. Instead of presenting the situation as a huge political battle between Sands vs. Thatcher or IRA vs. British government, it simply gives a personal, visceral, and matter-of-fact reenactment of the condition and happenings inside Maze prison.
The filming style is distinctively artistic: lots of long shots, heavy preference on images over words or dialogues, and a loose continuity editing that defies conventional plot structure. In this regard, the approach is a hit-and-miss: it does achieve a strong and raw impact, but the manner in which it is assembled (especially in the beginning) feels rather haphazard, does not lend much narrative depth, and perhaps leaned too much toward the prisoners' side (the viewpoint from the other side, as represented by the character of Lohan, does not work as effectively as the images of the prisoners scrubbing their feces on walls or struggling against the officers' violent conducts). The movie, however, picks up some serious momentum on 'the conversation' segment and onward.
Steve McQueen's Hunger, a dramatization of the event, focused strictly on the chronological happenings inside the Maze prison. The key figures are Bobby Sands (Fassbender), leader of the strike, Father Dominic Moran (Cunningham), a priest coming to the prison to argue with Sands about the moral implications of the strike, Raymond Lohan (Graham), a prison officer under perpetual threat of murder by IRA assassins, and a handful other IRA prisoners doing various acts of political statements in the decrepit prison.
Wisely avoiding any political discourses about IRA, the British government, or even the national impact of the strike itself, the movie is interested in doing only one thing: to objectively examine an act triggered by overwhelming determination. Neither the act nor Sands are painted as heroic (consider the words from Thatcher herself, "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organization did not allow to many of its victims"), but they are also not portrayed as misguided or hypocritical. Instead of presenting the situation as a huge political battle between Sands vs. Thatcher or IRA vs. British government, it simply gives a personal, visceral, and matter-of-fact reenactment of the condition and happenings inside Maze prison.
The filming style is distinctively artistic: lots of long shots, heavy preference on images over words or dialogues, and a loose continuity editing that defies conventional plot structure. In this regard, the approach is a hit-and-miss: it does achieve a strong and raw impact, but the manner in which it is assembled (especially in the beginning) feels rather haphazard, does not lend much narrative depth, and perhaps leaned too much toward the prisoners' side (the viewpoint from the other side, as represented by the character of Lohan, does not work as effectively as the images of the prisoners scrubbing their feces on walls or struggling against the officers' violent conducts). The movie, however, picks up some serious momentum on 'the conversation' segment and onward.
'The conversation', a single uninterrupted 17-minute shot where Bobby converses with Father Dominic, is easily the highlight of Hunger in both narrative and technical aspects. Not only it really stands out in a movie with so few words and dialogues, but it is very well-acted (Fassbender and Cunningham reportedly had to live together and practice this scene for at least twelve times a day) and does a great job in underlining the whole point of a hunger strike from Bobby's perspective and Father Dominic's counter-perspective.
And then, after showing us the mindset of someone brave/determined/crazy enough to do the act, Hunger proceeds to show what happened to a human body when denied food for a very long time. Internal bleeding. Kidney failure. Low blood pressure. Ulcer. All those look very realistic, stark, and affecting, as we see Sands' slow and painful suffering in horror. Fassbender's commitment must be heavily praised, and while I don't exactly know just how far he went for this whole segment (he lost LOTS of pounds, that's for sure) and how much is the contribution from the make-up department, he certainly did a very convincing job portraying a man slowly dying of starvation.
Even with the closing narrative text detailing the aftermath of the strike, Hunger did not end with a sense of triumph or defeat on either side. It is not meant to generate sympathy for the cause of the hunger strikers, or condemn them for doing such an act, but to show just how far someone can go for something he truly believes in.
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